SOLD!!!!!!!

And they accepted our counter!!!!!   So we sold the house for 98.5% of list price and in 4 days.  Pretty damn awesome if I do say so myself. 

Ok enough horn tooting.  I'm going to now tell you the hidden costs of selling your house. 

1)  Staging - we are fortunate b/c my mom is an excellent stager.  Thus, we did not have to pay a fee to have her stage the house.  However, in the process of staging the house she did purchase some things and that total cost was maybe $300.  A stager would cost like $350.  This is a cost that is TOTALLY worth it.

2)  Realtor Commission - RL dropped her commission from 6% to 5% because we are both selling and buying with her.  She would not reduce it any more because of the costs that she personally incurs from marketing the house.  This is another cost that is TOTALLY worth it.  RL hired a professional photog to take the pictures to go on the listing.  Of all the houses in our price range on the internet our definitely showed the best.  The photog used a wide angle lens and it made the house look a lot bigger than it is. She also spent considerable time on the internet view of the listing and hosted a realtor tour of the house.

3)  Bins - Holy crap did I buy a lot of bins.  Bins for the closets to put out of season clothes and bins for the basement to organize holiday decorations, all the stuff we took out of the main house for staging, and all the kids books and toys.  I probably bought a total of 15 bins.  Those things are not cheap, even at Meijer.

4)  Dinner - When people want to see your house at night, you need to be out of it and so you need to go out to dinner.  Cost for a family of 4 at a sit down restaurant is about $50 with tip.  If this happened to us more than the 3 times it did, we would have had to start going to McDonald's and then we would all get fat.  Well, only I would get fat b/c Mr. Molly and the 2 kids have insane metabolisms.

5)  Electricity - For every showing you have to turn all the lights on.  Every single light, all the overheads, lamps, and closet lights.  If the showing is at 1pm, you need to turn the lights on when you leave at 7am and they still on till 2pm.  Even then, the showing realtor doesn't turn off all the lights, only the overhead ones.  Related to this cost is the cost of light bulbs and the cost of keeping your heat/air at a normal and comfortable temperature all day.

6)  Carpet Cleaning - You need to have your carpets cleaned before you show the house.  People who don't do this baffle me.

7)  Cleaning Lady - our normal every other week appointment was changed to every week.  This cost could be avoided if you own cleaning supplies, which I don't.

8) Landscaping/Handyman - again if you have time and skillz then you can avoid this cost.  We don't so had to pay people to paint and power wash and edge the beds, etc.  For us, it was worth it.

9) Sleep - I had to sacrifice sleep and that was a cost to me.  I had to go to bed an hour later and get up an hour earlier in order to have everything perfect every day for showings.

10) Sanity - This is self-explanatory and not really a "hidden" cost.  Everyone around me could see that I was slowly unravelling.

So in a nut shell, I'm so freakin' happy this is over and that we only had to show our house for a total of 4 days.  The buyers are coming in Sunday morning to view it one more time, so after that I can go back to being messy.  Shhhhhh... don't tell Mr. Molly.